Knife wielding man goes on rampage in Chinese school

Twenty-two school children and an elderly woman have reportedly been injured after a knife-wielding man went on the rampage outside a school in central China.

State-run news agency Xinhua said police had arrested a 36-year-old villager named as Min YingjunPhoto: Alamy

By Tom Phillips, in Shanghai

11:06AM GMT 14 Dec 2012

The attack took place at around 7.40am Friday morning as children arrived for class at a primary school in Henan province's Chenpeng village.

State-run news agency Xinhua said police had arrested a 36-year-old villager named as Min Yingjun.

In a post on Weibo, the Chinese micro-blogging site, local reporter He Zhengquan, described the attack as a "vicious incident." "One mental patient charged into a group of students on their way to school, hacked and injured one resident and 22 students," he wrote.

Police were putting their "full efforts" into rescuing the injured, Mr He added. A photograph, posted online, showed one apparently injured child being carried into a hospital. It was not clear if there had been any fatalities.

An official at a local hospital told Associated Press the man had attacked an elderly woman before setting on the children and then being controlled by school guards.

Recent years have seen a series of often-deadly attacks on Chinese schools. Among the worst was a March 2010 attack, when a man used a knife to kill eight students outside a school in Fujian province.

Two months later a man armed with a meat cleaver killed seven children and two women at a nursery in Shaanxi province. He then committed suicide.